Chapter 6

There were very few letters exchanged between Martin and Robin, mostly because neither could really say anything that they were doing for fear that someone else would read their letters. Martin's letters were full of stories of he and his brother's exploits as children. Robin's were about her studies and stories of her and her sisters. But that small bit of reassurance was all the Robin needed. Knowing that she hadn't been abandoned by Martin had given her the courage to do what she had to do.

And she needed that courage to deal with the aftermath of the various raids that the older people were pulling off. Even worse was when they didn't pull off the raid, losing people and doing no significant damage to the enemy. Robin had never seen a person die before, much less while she was trying to save their lives. But she had now.

Polly was in the lizard room, the room that had cages full of reptiles that the scientists were experimenting on. Robin was with her and they were feeding the animals. "I wonder if this is what they look like without their body suits?" Polly wondered holding up one of the lizards.

Robin looked over. "Kinda," she said distractedly. "They're a darker green and they have shorter claws though."

"You saw one of them?" Polly's intention of picking a fight with her sister fluttered away in the view of this new information. She had planned on shoving the lizard into her sister's face. Robin could be such a pain. But this was far more interesting.

Robin shrugged. "I saw one of them take a shower. Well, a dust shower not a water one." She put the dish full of crickets in one of the cages. Just then one of her frequent bouts of morning sickness caught her and she ran out.

"Polly have you seen Robin?" Robert asked as he walked in.

"She went to puke again. Did she tell you that she saw a Visitor taking a shower without his body suit?" she asked eager to share the grotesque information.

"Thanks sweetie, I really needed to hear that," Robert said as he left in search of his oldest daughter. He found Robin in the bunk room where she and his other daughters slept. She was clinging to a bunk support

"Honey please, just tell me who the father is and I'll find him," Robert pleaded. "You shouldn't have to go through this alone." He wanted to support his daughter's decision but not knowing who had knocked his daughter up was killing him. He just prayed that she hadn't been raped. An accident under the sorts of conditions that she had been in while she was a prisoner was something that he could handle. Rape wasn't.

'That's what I'm afraid of,' Robin thought. "No," she insisted. "It wasn't supposed to happen. It was an accident. He doesn't need to know."

"Ok, ok, I'll stop asking," Robert relented. "If it's any consolation your mother always had pretty bad morning sickness too." It wasn't exactly a lie. Kathleen Maxwell really had, had terrible bouts of morning sickness during her three pregnancies. But Robin's was going on for far longer than Kathleen's had.

"Julie thinks that I may need to cut out some types of food; that maybe the baby can't handle them," Robin admitted. Julie had been talking about switching her to an almost totally raw food diet as that was more similar to what the Visitors ate.

"Is there anything I can get you?" Robert asked.

"Tea? The herbal stuff? It's almost the only thing I can drink," Robin admitted.

"One cup of tea coming right up," Robert promised. He kissed her forehead before heading off to the kitchen. Watching to make sure that her father really was out of the room Robin got up and walked over to the lone mirror on the wall. Once there she pulled her turtle neck away from her neck to expose a bluish-green mark at the base. The mark was slowly growing.

If Julie hadn't told her that it was probably a Visitor pregnancy symptom she would have been terrified. But Julie had dated this geek in high school who was into reptiles of all kinds. And one of the few things she had remembered was that when one of his pets had become pregnant the small lizard's skin had changed color. Julie had also cautioned her about informing her of any and all cravings she might have. With this child being half alien there was no telling what the baby might need in the way of nutrients and the best way to figure that out would be to listen to her body.

"Robin, because the baby is a Visitor there are going to be things that happen to you that aren't normal for a fully Human pregnancy. We just have to listen to what your body is telling us and then do what we can to accommodate what both you and the baby need." Robin would be glad when the baby was born. She was already tired of being pregnant. Maybe if she'd been able to share it with Martin it would have been different but with the war nothing was as it should be.

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Donovan and his people were up to something. That was nothing new but when he started getting cagy then Martin knew that the trouble coming was bigger than usual. Plus there was the fact that he was trying to get uniforms and weapons. Mike had asked for weapons before and Martin had managed to get a few to him but he had never asked for uniforms before.

Martin hadn't wanted to tell Mike that he couldn't get him any more weapons. But the truth was that strict track was now being kept. Uniforms were going to be easier. One of his Fifth Columnists worked in the morgue. It would be easy for him to get uniforms that wouldn't be missed.

Then there was the little matter of Sean Donovan. Martin owed Mike a lot for his own family life. He would have never have known that he was going to be a father himself if it wasn't for Mike telling him that Robin was pregnant. He understood why Robin hadn't told him. It wasn't something that could be written down and they couldn't meet face to face. That little revelation had sent him searching through Diana's records in an effort to figure out just how this miracle had been achieved. What he had found was that Diana had planned the entire thing. He didn't think that he would ever under stand that woman.

Diana's experiments had provided some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in the last decade. But the way she worked had become more and more erratic and less scientific with the more power she acquired. It was more like a child pulling parts off of their food to see what would happen before the meal died than a serious scientific study. The trouble was that she was still a great scientist. Even when she threw scientific reasoning out the porthole, she still achieved things that should have been impossible.

How could he possibly get Sean out? The boy was going to have to be revived before anything else and that required expertise that he didn't have. Well, first he was going to have to find the boy. He had narrowed down where he was to a section but he'd have to have a picture to find his exact location. He hoped that Mike could get him one. He didn't want Mike to lose his son. He didn't want to lose his child either. He remembered with chilling clarity Mike's assessment of Robin's father's feeling towards Visitors.

Martin leaned back in his chair and considered the difficulties of reviving the boy and then getting him off the ship. Just then Steven marched into his quarters. "Steven?" he asked. "Is something wrong?"

Steven threw down a computer disk. "You have a message from the home world. It's sealed under a House Heir sigil. Why?" Steven demanded.

'Crap,' Martin thought. 'I should have remembered that Kkkeesk would feel my pain.' That was one of the things about him and his brother. When one was hurt, the other felt it. They could also feel each other's strong emotions if they were on the same planet. No one outside of his immediate family was aware of this quirk between the twins. In fact, it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the medical literature either. His family had done their best to keep this information a secret. It would be all too easy for someone like the Leader to turn this link into a weapon, either for his own use or against the twins.

Martin sighed and took the disk. He knew that Steven shouldn't have tried to open it. House messages were supposed to be kept private. But that was just one more thing that was becoming a thing of the past under the Leader. Martin opened the message and found what he expected; a mishmash of Visitor writing that said 'Who is she?'. There was nothing else.

"Is that a code?" Steven demanded over his shoulder.

"No, it's a written version of a spoken language that exists only among my immediate family," Martian admitted. Actually it only existed between him and his brother. It was their secret language, one that no one had ever been able to understand.

"What does it say?"

"Someone informed my family that I was given a Battle Bride. They want information on her," Martin said flatly.

"But why would they send that under a House Heir sigil?" Steven asked. Then he face cleared. Martin had opened the message with his palm print. "You are the House Heir?" he asked quietly. It wasn't unusual for some Houses to send their heirs into service under a cloak of secrecy. It gave the heir a good look at politics from the ground up and it protected them from being used as a pawn.

"My brother is now," Martin said. "I no longer qualify. I have to answer this if you don't mind, Steven."

Steven nodded and quickly left. It was a good thing that his career was no longer attached to Diana's. What she had done would earn her a quick death sentence along with anyone who had helped her. He should do what he could to help Martin. Even as a former House Heir, the lieutenant would have a lot of power one day and he would remember those who helped him in his time of difficulties.